Timekeeping

33 min • 19 mars 2019

If you think about it, we’re all time travelers moving forward at one second per second… right? This week, we try really hard to define time, get sort of existential about it, and then talk about the science of timekeeping, from circadian rhythms to weird mechanical clocks. What happens to someone’s sense of time if you put them in a big bunker locked away from the outside world? How did we decide there would be 60 seconds in a minute, and did we ever try to measure time with a decimal system? And if a human were to instantaneously dissolve into a pile of goo because their time was up, what would it sound like?

Sources:

[Truth or Fail]

https://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/F11/philbiology2011/aschoff.circadianrhythmsinman.1965.pdf

https://www.mpg.de/943613/S003_Flashback_060_061.pdf

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/6216073/Maurizio-Montalbini.html

[Fact Off]

Music & walking:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0067932

Castle Clock:

http://muslimheritage.com/article/al-jazari%E2%80%99s-castle-water-clock-analysis-its-components-and-functioning

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/al-jazari-s-book-of-knowledge-of-ingenious-mechanical-devices-the-castle-water-clock/DgF6LT4UYXvU4A

https://www.ee.columbia.edu/not-your-father%E2%80%99s-analog-computer-professor-yannis-tsividis